To My Boy -- Antigua, Guatemala

There are a lot of aspects about countries like Guatemala that I love.

I love the colors.

The colorful people, the vibrant flora, the unabashedly blue houses doing their best to match the color of the sky.

I love the lack of regulations on things like street food. Men and women selling their home cooked tostadas topped with lettuce, pink sauerkraut, tomatoes, beans, cheese and a glistening half of an egg plopped atop the pink mountain.

I love the architecture. I love that in places like Antigua, it's so easy to stare at buildings and wonder. Wonder things like who lived there, what they might have done, and what they must have thought and felt when the shaking ground of this earthquake prone zone forced them to leave their homes behind.

But I get tired of the trash everywhere. Coke bottles propped against the sides of beautiful stone buildings. Candy bags crammed into ancient crannies. Plastic plates and plastic forks and plastic cups and plastic --

I love the freedom people experience when selling their wares without needing a business license.

But for the last time, I really don't want to buy a painted wooden flute. Really. Don't. Want. That. Thing. You. Have.

There were two little girls yesterday -- adorable little girls -- who wouldn't leave me alone. They kept pulling out key chains and holding them against my phone, seeing which one would match best.

I wish my Spanish was good enough to communicate that I don't have keys. No car, no house, no locker, no bike to lock... no need for keys so a keychain would be of no use at all to someone like me.

So I just smiled pleasantly and said, "no gracias." Again. And again. And again.

A pleasant "no thank-you," fell on belligerently deaf ears. So I was forced to utter an unpleasant "no thank-you."

God, I dislike feeling like I have to be an asshole in order to maintain my personal boundaries. 

Boy. I wish you could be with me now. I'm sitting alone on a curb in the middle of central park. The curb itself is probably the least comfortable curb on which I have ever sat (it's got a curve in the middle that jabs the tailbone just so), but the music that's just commenced is something that almost makes me forget about my complaining backside.

A group of five musicians is warming up in front of the fountain. One strums a banjo. Another taps his drums. A fellow wearing a black hat I'd like to make my own plays a rainbow wooden flute with grace and mystery and longing and all the other feelings a flute played properly ought to evoke.

I just passed by a clown doing a hilarious mime/juggling act in the main walking street. People were gathered around so thickly that I was only granted a glimpse or two of hilarity. Girls were sitting on their father's shoulders and all the German and Dutch tourists (there are lots around here) enjoyed the advantage of their long legs.

It's been a lonely day without you.

There's a little girl in baggy jeans, a coral shirt and one fat ponytail happily wiggling her bum to the music. She took a quick break from her dance routine to run to her mom and nab a swift lick of an orange colored ice-cream cone, but has returned to the dance floor to wiggle her bum some more.

I love that the buildings of Antigua tell their stories in layers of colors. Chipped paint. Blue on top of yellow on top of red on top of --

Plants growing from the tiled roofs, lending the buildings a fuzzy silhouette against the textured sky.

I love the windows. I love that the windows are covered with rusty bars and filled with flowers. I think it's quirky and annoying that the windowsills extend maybe two feet onto the sidewalk. One must forever keep one's wits about one when strolling down this ancient city's sidewalks. Else one might end up clobbered into unconsciousness by a well-meaning (but misplaced) windowsill.

I love that every other block has a lady selling fruit. I don't like so very much that I'm not sure if I really trust the fruit the ladies are selling, but I love the yellow/orange mangoes and orange/red papayas sliced up and peeking out of plastic baggies.

But I hate seeing the bags full of bananas and blackberries.

Knowing you so well makes being away from you so much harder.

I stop in front of the banana and blackberry fruit lady and imagine you losing your shit over her monster mother-f*cking blackberries.

I see women tugging along their chubby-cheeked little monsters and I imagine you squeezing my hand and saying, "No babies."

"No puppies, no babies," I would (promptly) reply.

I walk down the old cobbled streets and imagine each narrow avenida and calle taking us four and a half forevers to pass through, 'cos you'd be so busy freaking out about the exquisite, rugged doors.

I watch people kissing in the park (I told you that they have a most excellent appreciation of PDA in this part of the world) and feel achy all over. Somehow, it doesn't feel natural to be so far away from you.

I didn't sleep last night. I was kept awake by the drip, drip, drip of a leaking faucet, the random explosion (I overheard gossip that the vice-president of Guatemala resigned. So now there are explosions) and the idea that you're thousands of miles away.

Boy.

I miss being close to you. In the car, around your kitchen table, on the couch by the front door of Main Street Bagels.

Every time I see something that makes me smile, I want you to be here to share it.

I passed a McDonald's today. It was guarded by a policeman wielding an automatic.

"Don't you f*ck with my McMuffins!" I wanted to say aloud and laugh with you.

But instead, I simply smiled quietly to myself.

I ordered a latte yesterday that was almost as creamy as that one we shared at the cafe by the beach in San Francisco. You know, that one time when Daniel bumped the table and spilled your coffee all over your blueberry danish. And then you two abandoned me on the windy beach to frolic in the frigid waves like the shenaniganizing hoodlums you are.

I want you to be here so I don't get whistled at and consistently asked for a light by gentlemen who don't really care whether or not I have a light. Having your arm wrapped around me would be so much nicer than perfecting the scathing look of "leave me alone, douchebag" or waiting for someone to see my Facebook profile picture of us together before they get the picture I've been trying to communicate for the last seventeen minutes.

I'm. Not. Interested.

The tree above me keeps raining Horton Hears a Who puffballs on me.

foop, foop, FLOOP.

I imagine you picking up the one that landed on my castle toes and saying something like, "Ahem... "A person's a person, no matter how small... " Guess which movie, ten points."

And I would finally actually get one of your movie quotes. But only because I served as kid wrangler for CMU's production of Seussical the Musical way back when.

It's hard to be without you, love. It's hard to see you in the dark clouds which you love so much. In the monster mother-f*cking blackberries and in every old door.

It's hard to see you in everything and just feel so far away.

It's raining now. The heavy black clouds finally burst. I'm typing this up from my corner in Samsara and listening to the droplets pound on the sidewalk. Watching the droplets flash by against the single incandescent light on the yellow wall of the building across the narrow street. And wishing you were here to whip out Madeline and coerce me into walking the cobbled streets of Antigua in the rain.